SWTOR 30 Day Jedi Challenge - Day 7

• Day 7 - NPCs: Your Jedi has met many different people in their travels. Describe some of their favorite and least favorite NPCs. What shaped their opinion about these people? Do they stay in touch?

Wow. Uhhhh... This one is particularly hard, because Arri is so very sympathetic. *I* didn't like the two "lovers" on Tython - and even less, the masters who asked me to snitch on them. But Arri tends to be a lot more forgiving than I am, so her disapproval comes across more as mild disappointment. She avoids the dogmatism that is often seen as the hallmark of Jedi ideals, and is more likely to seek understanding first before deciding that cooperation is not possible.

She doesn't do very well at keeping in touch. Her life is a solitary one, but for the time being, that isn't a bad thing. She's enjoying the chance to explore the galaxy, live her own life, and maybe touch the lives of others.

SWTOR 30 Day Jedi Challenge - Day 6

• Day 6 - Companions: Describe the people who travel with your Jedi. Why do they stick around? What kind of relationship do they have with your Jedi? What were their first impressions? What kinds of things do they argue about? Do they do anything together when they aren’t trying to save the galaxy?

In my version of the story, Arri travels alone for the most part. There are those who travel with her for a time, but none of them have become long-term partners. The lone exception is the odd little droid Teeseven, who takes care of the ship that the Order has entrusted to Arri's use. Sometimes Arri feels like it's his ship, and she's merely the pilot!

Arri cares deeply for Teeseven. She realizes that it is unusual to form an attachment to an object, but her discussions with the droid have begun to go beyond simple exchanges of information. She is starting to question whether it truly is an 'inanimate object' and what it means to be sentient.

SWTOR 30 Day Jedi Challenge - Day 5

• Day 5 - Jedi Training: We meet our Jedi on Tython, [when] they are Padawans almost fully-trained. Where were they trained before then? Who were their masters and how did they get along? Did they have any friends or rivals? What was their life like between joining the Order and traveling to Tython for their final trials?

Arri was raised without any formal education. When she was accepted into the Academy on Vornu, she tried to hide what she felt were her failures, but it wasn't long before the masters realized that she couldn't even read. They were invariably patient and kind, but she still heard the voices of the over-servants on Hutta, telling her she was useless and pathetic.

Months stretched into years, and Arri worked hard to make the best of her opportunity. She didn't have the raw talent of some of her peers, nor a deep connection to the Force, but what she did have was patience and persistence. 

She was generally well-liked among the other students, not least because she always had a stash of cookies in one of the many pockets in her hand-me-down robe and was always willing to share. Even though she knew that the life of a Jedi is unpredictable and usually nomadic, she was a little sad each time one of the others left to continue training or carry out the goals of the Order. When the time came for her to go to Tython, she felt that same ache, but it was somehow different - there was a sharp tang of excitement at the edge.

SWTOR 30 day jedi challenge

• Day 4 - Family & Early Life: Most Jedi are separated from their families at a young age, but that doesn’t mean their families don’t impact their life. Where did your Jedi come from? How much of their early life do they remember? What was it like? Were they happy to leave it behind for the Order? Does their family still play a role in their life? Do they limit their idea of family to biological relatives?

Arri does not remember anything from before Hutta. Her life there was difficult; she was unimportant, not good for much beyond being given the most dreary, unpleasant tasks and getting blamed for anything that went wrong. But she learned how to avoid being noticed, and when that wasn't possible, how to minimize the damage, and when that wasn't possible, how to survive.

It wasn't a happy life, by any sort of measure, but it was the only one she'd ever known. And while she was never quite convinced that she was as fortunate to have her position as those above her insisted she ought to be, she was well aware that things could have been even worse. Still, she was glad to leave, and has no desire to return.

She still wonders who her family was, and why and how she was separated from them. And she hopes that maybe one day she will find some answers...

Story Spectrum

So I posted this over at my tumblr and thought it might fit well here:

swanjolras:

like tbh i feel like my problem with the “dark and gritty!!” trend in modern stories is this

there’s this idea in our culture that cynicism is realistic? that only children believe in happy endings, that people are ultimately selfish and greedy and seeing with clear eyes means seeing the world as an awful place

that idealism is— easy, i guess. butterflies and sunshine and love are easy things to have in your head.

but i’ve known since i was fifteen that idealism— faith in humanity— optimism— is the most difficult thing in the entire world.

i constantly struggle to have faith in humanity, because it’s really, really easy to lose it. it’s easy to look at the news and go “what were you expecting? of course humans behave this way.” it’s easy to see the world and go “ugh, there’s no hope there.” and the years when i believed that were easy. miserable— but easy.

it is hard work to see the good in people. it is hard work to hope. it is hard work to keep faith and love and joy and appreciation for beauty in my daily life.

and when moviemakers and tv producers and writers go “omg!!! all characters are selfish and act poorly and don’t love each other, nothing ever happens that is happy or good, that’s so much more realistic, that’s so much more adult”

no, it’s not

it’s childish.

it’s the most childish thing i can imagine.

Meh. I don’t agree.

Stories illustrate the full spectrum of human experience. Life can be beautiful and inspiring and delightful. But it can also be ugly and painful and deadening. Different stories may focus on different points along the spectrum, and that’s okay. Or, sometimes they show one part of the spectrum with another in contrast. There is room in our collective imagination for many different kinds of stories, and ignoring or denying an entire category based on its tone diminishes us.

But we believe that we live in a universe where there are reasons for things that happen, whether those reasons exist in the natural world, in human agency, or in some sort of metaphysical dimension we don’t fully understand. So stories that are inexplicably cheerful, in which nothing ever goes wrong, are not realistic. But at the same time, stories that are pointlessly gritty, in which nothing goes right, are equally far-fetched.

In both cases, though, the problem isn’t with the tone of the story, but with the lack of causal connections between events.

(Source: swanghoulras)